


boyish

by louvely



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Fluff, Happy Ending, Implied Underage, M/M, Underage - Freeform, kind of like rape aftermath but it was consensual??, major drabble i am so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 09:26:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louvely/pseuds/louvely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>harry and louis were close like a little boy and his caretaker. they were close in the way things should be, in a tall, aged house with dusty hardwoods and baked sweets and hide-and-go-seek. and then louis made a mistake, and harry is the one left picking up the crumbs of a life in which they were supposed to thrive.</p>
<p>otherwise, the drabble where harry's mum has died, louis has stumbled all over a little boy's innocence, and harry was so happy to have a home again. please read notes!</p>
            </blockquote>





	boyish

**Author's Note:**

> hiii, so i just wanted to mention what has happened in the time frame before the story begins. basically, i've been seeing a truck load of underage fics and daddy kinks and i just wanted to write a really angsty fic that is kind of in response to those? i spent like twenty minutes on this ok so don't judge. this is pretty much just an aftermath; after louis has already done stuff with harry, who is his god-son. i dunno i'm such shit at describing stuff so just enjoyy! :) x

            Harry’s smile engulfs his face as he slides his fingers throughout the empty bowl. Cake batter is still clinging to the sides, and the mixture is now invading his face as well. He examines his dirty hands and brings the entire bowl over his face, tongue gliding over any of the sweet residue. When he pulls it away, his face is impish, and brown, and he’s a little boy. He doesn’t care.

            And Louis thinks, for a time, that this is the sort of pleasure little boys should feel—happiness through mischief, and good cake batter. Nothing else should be allowed to spoil the opaque innocence of an early life; especially not Harry, his little cherub, his little slice of childhood.

            Louis’ hands are trembling as he lifts the cake pans into the oven. He closes it, telling himself that his reddened face is from the heat. It isn’t. He doesn’t dare think that he has trudged over Harry’s purity; no, he doesn’t. He _hasn’t_.

            Louis has to take a seat at the kitchen table, then, staring up at the ceiling beams. He has to try and think of anything else. These thoughts are turning his head over, whirling, making him dizzy. He presses his hands into his face, because it has been a long day. He’s tired.

            Harry is spinning, wobbling around in clumsy circles. His cream jumper, a hand-me-down from Louis, is tugging up at the sides. His tiny toes wretch into the kitchen rug and ruffle it. Laughter is wracking through his little body, the kind of laughter that comes from the high of being watched doing something silly as he is now. Louis can see the boy peeking from the corner of his eye, to see if Louis is watching him and laughing along. Louis isn’t.

            It’s a sunny day, and this new kitchen of theirs has light flooding in from every angle. Louis was proud when he first bought their new house. It’s a compact two-story building with tall windows and Louis wishes that the windows didn’t remind him of how much he is hiding. The woodwork inside is old, and dark brown, and it borders the entire home. Stacks of books have littered every surface in the house, aside from the kitchen, which is no safe place for a work of literature. This was supposed to be where he grew old with his new little boy, his god-son. These hallways were supposed to be over-run by laughter and shrill, childish happiness.

            Louis is no longer proud of this house.

            He smells heated cake, and Harry is tugging on Louis’ belt loop. Louis looks down and swats the boy’s hands away. His stomach has inhabited a Merry-Go-Round and he doesn’t look at Harry’s face. “Daddy, you’re burning the cake!”

            The cake is taken from the oven to the stove. Louis’ hips dig into the countertop. “Harry, why don’t we, erm. Play a game of hide and seek? While we wait for the cake to cool, yeah?”

            He does not intend on finding Harry. All he wants to do is to take that cake in his hands and demote it to crumbs, as well as anything it may symbolize. He can’t do this anymore.

            Harry runs off, anyway, feet oddly twisted in that little duckling way that they always have been. Louis doesn’t note that, no.

            He doesn’t want to look for Harry, so he slides down to the floor and his veins are strangled with sobs. His face is warm, like a cake. The cake pan is on the floor, and with it, Louis’ image of a family is diminished. He feels disturbed. He knows that he was never going to be able to do this.

***

            Harry’s chest is fizzling as he disappears behind a doorway. He presses his bony shoulders into the dark wood paneling of the wall. Giggles tear from his mouth and he cups his chin to hamper them. He can imagine Louis—shadow coating the floor in front of him, and the excitement that would come with having the man be so close to discovering him. He can imagine him, then, barreling into him and throwing him over his shoulder. And he can taste Louis’ smell; the exact replica of a home that he wasn’t aware was possible after his mother died. He picks at a thread in his sweater, happy to have someone with him now. Someone to give him sweaters, and bake him cakes, and search for him.

            Harry hasn’t realized, yet, that Louis isn’t searching for him.

            And he doesn’t, not for ten minutes, when he is almost collapsed because he has to wee so terribly. He’s trying to keep his legs pressed tight, as to try and stifle the nagging. He really should go to the toilet, but he wants to be good for Louis, and he doesn’t want this game to be over.

            Hastily, the disappointment of coming out of hiding is overwhelmed by how badly he needs to go to the bathroom. He tiptoes up the stairs and shuts the bathroom door.

            When he skips down the stairs, there is a woman in his kitchen. The cake tin is on the floor and he wails.

            The woman takes his tiny, squishy hand. She leads him into the living room. He sits with her, in the couch, asking her continually, “Where’s my Louis?”

            She says that he had to go. She only says it once, because she doesn’t like repeating herself. When Harry has stopped crying, and the police lights from outside have been chased away, she tells him a joke about a rabbit.

            Even though Harry is sad, he laughs. He feels betrayed by this woman. Here he was trying to be sad and uncomfortable and she makes him laugh. It feels like all of those times when Harry tried to be mad at Louis. Louis would poke at his cheek, trying to drag up a smile, murmuring, “Don’t smile, don’t smile, don’t smile, your face will crack!” Harry would smile.

            Harry can’t help himself. “Why did the baboon say to the giraffe, ‘why the long face?’”

            “Why?”

            “Because he thought his face was his neck!”

            Harry is obscenely proud of himself, sniggering into his chubby hands, back burying into the cushion.

            This is a little boy, betrayed by a laugh. Louis thinks that that is how little boys should be. He had to go.

 

**NINE YEARS LATER**

 

            Harry smiles at the chime of the door. This first day of summer smells the sweetest; scents of sunshine mingle with the flavor of hot pavement. It’s not warm, not in this part of England, but the sun is infectious, and everyone around is warmed.

            This book store smells particularly like something familiar, something sunny. It has that signature “home” scent, and Harry chases it. The windows in the front of the store allow little light, but none is really needed. Harry thinks that the books do a swell job of lighting up the place. He always has.

            The bookcases are a dark, coppery brown color that is only achieved through old age and use. All of the books are donations, and considerably old, which Harry isn’t discomforted by in the slightest. He’s only come this far to own the worn spines and inhale the dust. He wants to find that sense of age and nostalgia that one can only truly absorb in a place of true use.

            He’s definitely found it. He tugs five books off of just one shelf, and already considers them his own. They smell rustic and dusty and he’s overwhelmed.

            As he approaches the fourth row of cases, he smells it again. The aroma invades his senses. He feels something twitch in his gut; a feeling that is so numbingly happy that it makes him want to vomit and cry.

            The scent is washed in books, so he continues to explore. He finds it again, though, this time inhabiting a body.

            Louis isn’t taller, but he’s thinner, and he is browner. His skin is still almond, and his hair, and he’s on the other side of the bookcase. Harry isn’t sure if the man has seen him yet. He wants to reach through the gap in the books that he’s looking at him through and grab him. He isn’t sure what he’d do with him, then—cuff his neck, hit him, disturb this sanctuary of words? He wouldn’t, not here.

            Harry feels cold all over. He’s scared and stumbles to the cash register, placing the books down with long wobbly fingers.

            No one is at the cash register. He peers around. His eyes hook on the door, which looks like the safest place to him right now. He takes a testy stride towards it, itching for relief from this fear.

            Instead, someone breezes past him and behind the counter and eyes the books. “That’ll be four-fifty,” the voice says.

            Harry is heaving when he meets Louis’ eyes. The immediate discomfort in the blue eyes in front of him makes him feel just an inch better. He is comforted by the fact that this is probably ten traces worse for Louis.

            Harry’s fingers are stiff in his pockets. He manages to retrieve a wad of cash as Louis writes a receipt, and then he scoops up the books and leaves.

            He’s standing outside the door, aware that Louis is likely to be watching him. His breathing is jagged, and he’s dry-gagging. He can feel a thousand paper cuts in his stomach, contorting his feelings towards everything. He feels like a little boy again; terrified, aching for a home, the same home he felt on Louis.

            Harry isn’t mad about what Louis did to him. Weekly sessions with a therapist for three years have soothed that confusion. He’s only mad at Louis because for what is almost the past decade, he hasn’t had a home. Not like he had all those years ago with Louis; not a house attacked by stacks of books, and old walls that tell a story, and worn couches, and baked cakes, and hugs that smell like family.

            Family. That’s what he’s missed.

            He tugs at a loosely hanging receipt. Scrawled into it, fashioned in Louis’ signature scratchy hand-writing is the word ‘sorry’.

            ‘Sorry’ doesn’t mend an entire generation of sadness and loneliness. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t rewind nights and nights of boyish sobs and nights alone in a bed that isn’t yours. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t build a home.

            But ‘sorry’ is good enough to acknowledge, and Harry turns, and Louis is smiling, and his smile looks like betrayal and tight hugs and sunshine and family and Harry is smiling too. 

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a comment or kudos if you enjoyed! thank youu for reading!
> 
> (just to clear up any confusion, considering how vague my writing style is, i'm going to mention that this one-shot is the aftermath of a kinda-sorta molestation. it sounds so dark when i put it that way, but yeah. harry was taken into foster care after louis kind of lost his mind over guilt because of what he did to harry, and i suppose louis was taken away. hopefully that gave you a better idea of what happened. thank you for your comments!! much appreciated xxx)


End file.
